it was the nvidia 535 driver. I switched to nouveau and that solved the stuttering/lag. but made gaming suck. so then I tried installing 550 drivers and that just outright bricked my system, recovered and went back to the 535. works for gaming so I’ll just tolerate the stuttering I guess.
I only just switched to Linux this past week and I use Mint. It was suggested to me by someone here on lemmy. It was easy to set up, customize, and get all my stuff working on it. I have World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, Elden Ring and a few other games all working on it. The only issue, and right now it’s a minor one, I’m having is the 535 nividia drivers can cause random stutters/lag every now and then but nothing major.
My point is for people like me who are new to linux and don’t want to get overwhelmed I think Mint is great. I know eventually i’ll change to a different more “advanced” distro, right now I have my eye on CachyOS, but I don’t think I’m there quite yet to confidently install it.